Embodied Vitality

Embodied Vitality concerns the human capacity to feel alive, not merely to function. Life reaches us through sensation, attraction, curiosity, movement, appetite, pleasure and play long before we turn those experiences into explanations.

The five capacities

Sensuality

Sensuality is the capacity to notice and inhabit sensory experience.

Pleasure

Pleasure is the capacity to register, tolerate and remain with positively felt experience.

Desire

Desire is the capacity to register and recognize wanting.

Joy

Joy is the capacity to let positive aliveness register fully enough to affect us.

Play

Play is the capacity to explore without requiring every action to justify itself through usefulness.

How these capacities work together

The capacities do not operate in isolation. These relationship entries describe important feedback loops, tensions and forms of mutual support between them.